Two nights ago I stayed up till sunrise, going through the complete IKEA catalog, obsessively marking various products with forcibly held open red sore eyes. Adania gave me a cold shower when I told her my shopping fantasies. she was blabbing about anti globalization and mainstream, about local craftsman and monstrous cartels. she was also very critical about the impersonal nature of the recent items I sent with "item_52". anyway, I can handle some hostile criticism. IKEA.co.il, prepare your stuff.
Yes, I'm moving to a new place in a few days. The place is being reconstructed right now and my shower is being installed as I write. I've always felt temporary in the places I've lived in. never bought my own furniture, always improvising with friends' thrown away stuff, things I find in the street, things I build provisionally. Indeed these places were always temporary, rented for a few months or a year. But isn't our lives temporary as well? isn't a year long enough? should I always live in a students-dormitory-like apartments? buy the cheap plastic house accessories in the market for 10 shekels? give away everything before going away because I don't know if I'm coming back? not planting herbs in the garden or fix the door because I'm moving out in three months? because it's not my garden, not my house?

Since I realized that owning a house is only a far future fantasy (my dictionary suggests a synonym; 'castle in the sky'…) (and this is probably a good place to say, to those who didn't figure it out yet, that the house I allegedly bought in Spain, in item #007, Was just a castle in the sky) I decided not to wait with having a home until I own one.
My plans include vegetables, herbs and chickens in the garden, dog/s, real furniture and a stable atmosphere. A home.

Just a sad thought and a sense of blame, going through my head every time I travel to and from my new home, in the Judean mountains, seeing the remains and ruins of the old Arabic villages, depopulated in '48 by the new Israeli state. why am I lucky enough to deal with IKEA dilemmas while the original inhabitants of the place I'm moving to, the people who could have been my neighbors, are dealing with occupation, war, death, hunger and shame.